A `Refined' Palate Is Born, Not Taught

March 20, 1997|_ SUZANNE S. JONES

According to Dr. Linda Bartoshuk, an experimental psychologist at Yale University, when fine cooks or wine connoisseurs boast about having a ``refined'' or ``educated'' palate, they are speaking with a forked tongue.

How sensitive you are to taste isn't a matter of education; it depends on the number of taste buds on your tongue. Bartoshuk says that the ability to taste is wired into the tongue and brain from birth. According to the research, there are super tasters (about a quarter of us), average tasters (about half of us) and non-tasters (about a quarter).

Super tasters have about 100 times as many taste buds as non-tasters, but they are not necessarily the people with the most sensitive palates. They admit that while taste is a limited sense, smell is complex. We can distinguish hundreds of odors, and that is why we can identify flavors and often ingredients in food. And sensitivity to smell is not determined exclusively by heredity, thus it is more difficult to measure. So what we call an ``educated palate'' is a combination of good genes and experience.